Aside from the category guideline expansion details with the arrows as you scroll down below, please read our Submittable reminders shared document HERE before proceeding and then carefully read https://www.dipitylitmag.com/submit. Thanks so much for considering Dipity as a home for your work and please never stop writing or creating no matter what our decision is!
Our remote Help Desk Center can be found here linked below. You can send an email to diptydesk@gmail.com if you have just a general question or hop into our Discord channel from the desktop version on our Help Desk page, not your mobile, but expect slower response times if it notes temporarily closed for other tickets: https://www.dipitylitmag.com/dipity-desk.
Choose one of the following options below:
OPTION A FOR POETS & PHOTOGRAPHERS:
1. Attach three never-before-seen photos--these MUST be your photography (captured by you) and be a single cohesive in theme i.e. birds, dark things, junkyards, tattoos, food, chocolate, and museums. Please no overly graphic or inappropriate photos or your submission will be declined. You're welcome to attach up to 5 and we can choose our fave 3 if accepted. Please attach these photos outside of the Word.doc file. [REQUIRED]. Your photos should preferably be vastly different from each other (see examples on Instagram).
2. You must provide ONE brand new previously unpublished short-form poem that fits a typical Instagram square that ties into your collection of three photos. The poem must be titled. Do not include any identifying information in the file or Word.doc. [REQUIRED]
3. Please share with us the camera model or capturing phone device model you used for your submission feel free to note this in your Word.doc or elsewhere. [PREFERRED]
4. We'll ask for a few photos of yourself (optional), any social media handles, and a brief bio confirmation again only after acceptance. This is a new challenge as of 10/15/2024. Your submission if accepted will be shared on at least Instagram at a minimum and possibly Twitter (X) and Threads or elsewhere.
5. Your poem will be eligible to be potentially published in our online tank or elsewhere one day with a visual collage from our founder and we'll inform you if that's ever done. It will also be eligible to be potentially published in a future print issue.
OPTION B. FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS:
1. Attach three never-before-seen photos--these MUST be your photography (captured by you) and be a single cohesive in theme i.e. birds, dark things, junkyards, tattoos, food, chocolate, and museums. Please no overly graphic or inappropriate photos or your submission will be declined. You're welcome to attach up to 5 and we can choose our fave 3. Please attach these photos outside NOT in a Word.doc file. [REQUIRED]
2. Please share with us the exact camera model or capturing phone device model you used for your submission feel free to note this in your Word.doc or elsewhere. [PREFERRED]
3. We'll ask for a few photos of yourself, any social media handles, and a brief bio confirmation again only after acceptance. This is a new challenge. Your submission if accepted will be shared on at least Instagram on our new dipity.pics channel at a minimum and possibly dipitylitmag Twitter (X) and Threads or elsewhere.
Please request that we open your submission for editing if you made a mistake that's totally ok--do not withdraw it unless the entire submission is accepted elsewhere.
Please attach the written word or text version of our spoken word piece in addition to your podcast audio or video submission so that we can follow along carefully.
Submit only one spoken word poem at a time. Our Founding Editor is no longer hosting episodes because we want to hear others more, so we are starting NEW video and audio submissions at dipity! Please bare with us as we're just starting the new video format option, but audio is still accepted too. If you haven't yet, listen to the Hummingbird Blink podcast on Spotify. The podcasts are 100% free to listen to also. We recommend listening to some of our past episodes such as no. 134 and no. 135 but remember your sub won't be in an interview format. Record yourself on your phone in video portrait mode or use your PC's built-in cam, the long horizontal sideways way not vertical or we may not be able to use your submission. Video [Optional] most poets use the Voice Memo app on their phone to record just audio-based submissions.
2. Say hi, state your name at least, and say Welcome to the [just the name of the podcast you're submitting to] podcast. The Hummingbird Blink: Nectar Poetry podcast. An introduction of some kind doesn't need to be exact.
3. State for example "I'll be reading my poem" [the title of the poem] pause a few secs and then read the poem. ONLY these community podcasts and bonus shares sections allow previously published poems.
4. After the poem we want you to state why you wrote it briefly or the story of it to you in terms of meaning (OPTIONAL).
5. You're totally welcome to share where others can grab more of your work, and upcoming publications or where to follow you on social media. Feel free to discuss what prompted you to start your poetry journey or why you love poetry too. Share fun facts or any information about yourself only as much as you're comfortable with.
6. At the end of your recording please share your favorite song + artist in existence for others or share your favorite movie. You can state a thank you for listening or closing message too.
Please appropriately credit any sources of inspiration too in your audio recording after reading.
7. The recording should be no more than a maximum of up to or within 3 to 8 minutes and ONE POEM of any length. The poem can be previously published for our podcast calls. Please state where else your work if applicable was previously published, the year etc. if possible or page number if its from one of your poetry publications.
OR if you don't prefer video, then we recommend submitting only audio files following the same instructions
You are permitted to skip the backstory or behind the poem, but should still end your recording stating your favorite song and the artist/band or musician in existence for fun. Or if you can't choose a fave song or artist you can state one of your favorite movies or TV Shows in existence. Additionally, you may share a fave poetry collection that you love as well, and remember to share the author's name (spell out any names via individual letters) and include its publication year. Again a concluding thank for listening message is preferred for your audio or video submission.
Do note music will not be on these individual read episodes going forwards because we would like to distribute these beyond Spotify and out to Apple etc. However, we may add a visual video clip similar to our online features tank to accompany audio-only-based reads. Video can only be seen on Spotify at this time and the audio on Apple and elsewhere.
Our annual contest has a new name. Please read the guidelines very carefully as a few changes have occurred. See past winners on our site or listen to our first round when it started as an example episode no. 128 with INGEBAR on the Hummingbird Blink Nectar Poetry Spotify podcast or winner announcement episodes such as no. 130 with Jazz Marie and episode no. 137 hosted by Emily Magpie in the example from 2024 above.
WINDOW 1 DEADLINE: DEC 1st-MARCH 1st 2025
Our editor DOES actually share these acceptances with the musicians, artists, or bands too! If the artist is available at the time of the contest closure they will also do an audio read of the winning poem and finalists otherwise our founder will read it. Our editor chooses the finalist group of three but the fave poem is selected by the artist or band themselves if they received more than one inspo poem like in 2023 and 2024. However, the three poems in the finals are from three different artist profiles, then the final decision goes to the editor.
ENTRY TERMS & CONDITIONS
Open to poets of ALL ages and they can be located anywhere in the world. Formerly known as the Symphonic Challenge in 2023, it is now permanently rebooted as our annual dipity. Surf Rock Poetry Prize because our founder just loves lol surfing movies lol aside from rock climbing, crocodile, and shark flicks. Due to recent events we have reduced our contest fees and provided a fee waiver for disabled poets. All $5 entry fees are non-refundable and go towards future community events and our operational expenses. Our reading team will not see your cover letter unless it makes it to the final stage. You can enter as many times as you like in the year before it closes. ALL accepted poems in each window will be published and featured under our Contest or Dipity Lit Mag > Online Tank > Surf Rock [Contest] Tab and become eligible to be part of one of our new upcoming spin-off Dipity Press community print series one day. We may hold up to two rounds in a calendar year if possible or close it early depending upon our submission volume caps.
HOW TO START:
SURF THE 22. Choose any ONE of the 22 artists or groups listed and linked BELOW and write up to THREE NEW poems inspired by just ONE of their song releases—we recommend going out to the links of their profiles below: SoundCloud [Tracks] section YouTube and Spotify, etc. It cannot be a cover song. Again, send up to 3 poems but focus on just ONE artist/ band and ONE song for the overall entry. The poems can be of any length or style (again read our general site sub guidelines under Submit carefully).
PRIZE DEETS
One 1st place winner will be awarded now $100 USD via PayPal within 30-120 days of closure once announced on our podcast show by the artists or band if available at the time of closure, or, the founder of dipity, and will also be announced through our newsletter/channel before the end of the year as some artists have tour events which impact the time of announcements. Our editor will share accepted entries with the artists. Deadline is March 1st, 2025 but subject to be extended based on submission volume. Once an artist reaches 8 poems from different poets they are crossed off for the round. The count will be updated under the Submittable bucket guidelines here below.
All accepted entries get a unique digital collage from our founder and will be placed potentially one day in one of our new upcoming print spin-off series part of Dipity Press and we'll inform you if that's ever done. Entries must be through Submittable only. We tend to use SoundCloud on our website, however not all artists are on there but that’s ok you can go out to Spotify, YouTube, etc. We have their profiles linked below. The artist selections can close now in the year once an artist/ bands has a max of 8 writers select them for this to make it as fair as possible or once our caps are hit—so be sure to read the Dipity Lit Mag > Surf Rock [Contest[ online tank section and bottom of each poem to see which artists have inspo pieces thus far. We will be cycling through all supportive artists and past issues but predominantly from our online community Q&As. Be sure to follow them and subscribe to their channels to stay in the loop on their releases too! We will carefully look at how you gained inspiration from the lyrics or song's vibe overall. READY SET, SURF!
dipity.'s 2025 Surf Rock Poetry Prize Artist & Band List
1. Saint Gardenia [OPEN] 0 of 8
- https://www.youtube.com/@saintgardenia/videos
- https://soundcloud.com/saintgardenia
- https://open.spotify.com/artist/08aIHAz9znmhSLwOuZOhqt
2. Isla Rose [OPEN] 0 of 8
3. NoxTros [OPEN] 0 of 8
4. ECHOS [OPEN] 0 of 8
5. Kiiōtō [OPEN] 0 of 8
6. EDDA [OPEN] 0 of 8
7. Boy Okay [OPEN] 0 of 8
8. CELIA [OPEN] 0 of 8
9. MUX [OPEN] 0 of 8
10. Some Days Are Darker [OPEN] 0 of 8
11. 92elm [OPEN] 0 of 8
12. Kylo [OPEN] 0 of 8
- https://open.spotify.com/artist/4H8gvWMKDnkJeqeuRtOqQj
- https://www.youtube.com/@kylomusic4987/videos
14. MYRY [OPEN] 0 of 8
15. Fever Blue [OPEN] 0 of 8
16. Marley Angel [OPEN] 0 of 8
17. BLOCKED [OPEN] 0 of 8
18. Fire Beninois [OPEN] 0 of 8
19. In the Middle [OPEN] 0 of 8
20. carlay [now also under the new artist name ] fkblnde [OPEN] 0 of 8
- https://soundcloud.com/arlobeets/full-moon-eyes-w-fkblndee
- https://soundcloud.com/callmecarlay/tracks
- https://open.spotify.com/artist/0H4AXwU7TtmiM1nhGiIJMZ
21. Josh Pozzi [OPEN] 0 of 8
22. Jahrund [OPEN] 0 of 8
A NEW SERIES we're kickstarting in 2025. Multiple micro-chapbook submission entries are permitted in each window. Your micro-chapbook(s) must be themed or have a distinct singular focus e.g. flower species, birds, movies, love, heartbreak, queer love, food, grief, environmental impact, horror, or sci-fi. Please leave your name off of the document file name and DO NOT include it inside the document anywhere.
Each micro-chapbook submission must contain ONLY 11 poems and include a title page, author page 5-8 sentences in third person (only after acceptance) leave it blank with BIO PAGE HERE, a description, and table of contents, an acknowledgments page; in a Word.doc. We'll resize the font and style so no worries, but ensure we can read the font e.g. Times New Roman. Please only put your cover letter and chapbook description(s) in the Submittable form box (it is concealed from our reading team levels).
REMINDER NO previously published poems (we want to see completely new poems). All poems must be titled, Read our Submit FAQ page too. Each poem should fit on one page.
We DO NOT accept Ai generated writing.
REMEMBER that our chapbooks will not be 8.5 x 11 and closer to approximately an A5 (5.2 x 7.8) saddle stitch booklet so your poems must fit this much smaller A5 page size therefore within or way under 30 lines single-spaced including line breaks would be ideal. ONE page per poem (do not carry a poem over to the next page).
While you can submit your poems on an 8.5 x 11 Word.doc, chapbook submissions that consist of poetry that fits the size limitations will only be considered. We will choose the font style and standard size for it so no worries there.
All submission processing and reading fees are non-refundable. We do have fees waived on the micro-chapbook series for disabled writers--please choose the appropriate checkbox for this. If you make a submission mistake we can open it for editing just message us through Submittable.
EXAMPLE LAYOUT REQUIREMENTS [Note For Micro-Chapbooks The Intro Pages 1-5 May Be Condensed]
Page 1. [Chapbook no. Page For Us ]
Page 2. Title Page - Title Only [Do NOT Include Your Name]
Page 3. Description of Chapbook Here [Leave Blank]
Page 4. Author About Page - Third Person [Leave Blank We'll Ask for this After or You Should Input it in Your Submittable Cover Letter Form Section Instead ] Followed by Your Chapbook Title(s) or About Collection Description(s)
Page 5 leave blank - dipity press + author copyright pages
Page 6. Acknowledgments or Dedications Page
Page 7. Table of Contents
Pages 8 - 19 [ For 11 Poems]
Page 20 - Leave Blank For Us OR You're welcome to create a playlist of 11 songs on this page (meaning pair one song to each poem in order of appearance that you feel represents the vibe of that poem).
We will choose one or more micro-chapbook manuscripts for each open window. The winner(s) for these will receive:
- 5 micro-chapbook print copies at a minimum and publication as payment instead within approximately a year. Acceptance decisions are within about 3-6 months after your submission or ASAP. We CANNOT provide cash award amounts at this time for our chapbooks but may in the future if enough submission interest is generated or seen for dipity. press's existence may be able to. Royalties nowadays are quite tough to maintain for small presses therefore we believe a donation-based page to support each accepted poet's chapbook would be better suited along with other forms of payment e.g. physical copies as payment. As time goes on, dipity. press may be able to facilitate cash prizes and bump up the number of physical print copies.
- You'll receive a U.S. print link on our site (no international shipping at this time for our micro-chapbooks series to the public), but if you're located in outside of the U.S. we will ship you 5 copies and the micro-chapbook can be purchased via download in our Shack section as it'll become part of our digital series.
- You retain 100% rights to your work and can include these poems in new or future publications and all that we ask is that you acknowledge dipity. press as the first publication appearance (optional but preferred) followed by the year.
- You will receive a signage agreement over these terms if selected.
- Those selected will get a direct donate button for your chapbook on our website under a new Shortys page similar to Chappies [ we are creating a new donate to poet chapbook page space to direct traffic towards to support poets' further long-term]. Readers and visitors of the Dipity Press micro-chapbooks series will be able to donate to you. They can also grab digital downloads of just our micro-series in our Shack as it will be predominantly digitally read by others.
- This is open to poets of all ages and international and we are not accepting translations at this time. We do not integrate art into the interior in all micro-chapbooks at this time.
- All sub fees and purchases of your chapbook go towards helping maintain dipity, supporting artists, fund contests, and future literary arts community publication projects or initiatives such as saving towards paying writers, promoting work, website maintenance fees, and our operation expenses since we do not have any significant funding or support at this time.
- Each accepted micro-chapbook will receive a cover design by an artist or staff which will be either photography collage-based or illustrative. We will pick your cover art.
- Selected chapbooks receive promotion through the shared dipitylitmag and press social media channels such as Threads etc. and our Substack. You're welcome to share through our podcast too if you let us know (optional).
The dipity. press micro-chapbook subs will be judged by Jazz Marie (VFORROW) and volunteer staff readers will aid in eliminating any micro-chapbooks that do not comply with guidelines or are not what we were looking for etc.
We may close this window early in the event of reaching caps or an extremely high submission volume OR may extend it if there are not enough subs in each window. Thank you so much in advance for considering us as a home for your work!
Follow dipity. productions on YouTube or Spotify. Here are previously unpublished audio examples of what we're looking for and what'll it look like [listen closely]. Also, if you dabble in music you're certainly welcome to add your guitar, piano, typewriter sounds etc. to your submission. For each accepted submission we'll also create a lyrics or written word video for fun.
We are starting a new spoken word community publication channel on streaming platforms for Dipity Literary Magazine. We recommend you listen to examples of a few spoken word artists if it's your first time tackling spoken word audio single or album tracks as well as the sample above.
A. This will mean we will generate an artist publication profile if you don't already have one on YT, possibly Spotify etc.that you can claim.
B. We will as of 11/14/2023 now cover one-time processing, and publication if accepted and be distributed on platforms such as Spotify, YouTube, iHeart, Tidal etc.
C. Your audio can contain up to three previously unpublished poems, although one poem like our existing examples is preferred. You can read one poem and discuss the backstory of it after reading it in your recording to meet the length requirement. If you are only reading one poem please DO STATE the title initially at the start with a few seconds pause then read. If your poem is longer in length then, you may totally not need to say the backstory to reach the 3-5 minute requirement. We welcome creativity if you want to add sound effects like you closing the door or ripping up newspaper pages at the end or start of your audio recording go for it.
I will be reading my poem [title]. This next poem is [title] or called [....] My last poem is called [title] Do NOT state your name as it'll be on the cover art if selected and written ownership fields.
D. Your audio must be a single file recording and be at least 3-5 minutes long for publication not under that and cannot exceed 5 minutes, but be closer to 5 overall for successful categorization acceptance.
E. Please attach 3-4 photos of yourself for us to pick from. If you prefer not having a photo then we'll simply use something else for a single cover for the spoken word soundtrack. Attach a Word.doc copy of your poetry read and the titles of each one.
Please note we are not able to give royalty artist payouts to writers, but any generation from our channels will go towards our maintenance expenses, project funds as well as keeping dipity up and running and working towards paying writers for their poetry submissions in print and online. You however retain 100% publication rights over your written words (lyrics) and spoken poetry. You can claim your artist profile too separate from dipity. Please let us know if you already have a spoken word or artist profile out on music streaming channels otherwise we'll help generate one on your behalf.